On to Japan

This trip is awesome. I love it. The cities are better than I expected. And visiting some of the companies has really made me rethink where I might want to work in the future and what I might like to do. The trip has also given me a chance to get to know some of my classmates better that I hadn't previously talked to a whole lot.

But enough of about that. Our last day in Beijing we spent visiting the Great Wall of China, which was absolutely amazing. After walking around it for awhile (which isn't actually all that easy) me and three others decided to ditch the group and ride to the bottom in one of those metal slide shoots. Yes, even the Great Wall is commercialized. But, I don't mind b/c it gave me an opportunity to fullfill my childhood dreams of being an Olympic louge athlete.

Shanghai is a great city and much cuter than Beijing. I'm really glad we got to spend as much time as we did there, even though there weren't a lot of historic sights. There were, however, a lot of markets and haggling is second nature to the Chinese. After the first hour or so, I decided that I actually enjoy haggling (but I bet that doesn't really come as a big surprise). I think my best purchase was a necklace for $5 and an enormous dragon kite (for Brody who just turned 5) for $10.

Last night we went to a kareoke bar and it is nothing like the states. You actually rent individual rooms, so it's just you singing in front of your friends. Obviously this leads to many more individuals singing. I think we're going to try it again here in Tokyo. I arrived in Tokyo this afternoon, but we didn't get to do much so far. Overall, it seems extremely quiet and clean. It also seems more Western than even the US. And, the sushi was great tonight.

Alright, I'm off to bed. I think we're going to try and hit up a fish market early tomorrow morning, assuming the typhoon doesn't hit us yet or anything.

Side note-- sorry for any misspelling. I'm on Joanne's computer and most of the backdrop is in Chinese so I don't know what I'm pushing.